In many applications, the alignment of objects is frequently challenging, and can have a meaningful impact on a business' costs and revenues. For example, the alignment of products, such as automobiles, pallets, boxes, or even tables in a service space, will influence the amount of the products that fit in the given space, or impact the layout of useful space there between. Improper alignment of products can increase the likelihood of undesirable losses, such as damage from unintended contact, misplacement or misidentification, disruption of transit routes (e.g., rows in a parking lot, aisles in a warehouse), and others. Such outcomes increase the costs incurred by a business, both in total and per unit area by facility.
Further, the aesthetic results of proper alignment can yield positive benefits in terms of increased revenue or reduced costs. Proper alignment of products presents customers with a professional, expert image of the business, and instills pride and discipline in employees who will exercise greater care and thoughtfulness in their jobs when presented with an environment focused in attention to detail. Thus, it is clear that increased capability to align objects is desirable in many environments.
However, as noted above, the execution of aligning objects, especially over extended distances, is frequently involved and labor intensive. For example, aligning cars along the frontage of a car dealership lot is time-consuming and frequently executed using multiple drivers and spotters to carefully pull different-sized cars into an aesthetically pleasing arrangement. The drivers frequently have little perspective of the edge of their bumper, and must either frequently exit the car to check the vehicle's position or attempt to communicate with spotters who may be located at a distance from the vehicle being moved.
In another example, forklift operators may handle pallets of different sizes for placement in racks of different sizes. Placing a pallet too far inward increases the risk of the pallet sliding off a front support and falling inward, hitting or moving a pallet in an adjacent rack, and/or the difficulty of identification of the pallet for later removal. Placing a pallet too far outward increases the risk that it will slide off the rear support or be hit by a passing vehicle. Because even skilled forklift operators cannot see the precise edges of their payload and vehicle, alignment presents a variety of challenges in this environment as well.
The example scenarios discussed, as well as many others that will be perceived by those of ordinary skill in the art, would accordingly benefit from new systems and methods facilitating fast, accurate, and flexible alignment of objects.